Sunday, January 31, 2016

The author of the text (which is in German) is purportedly a former member of the Islamic State who wants to warn the West that ISIS possesses four nuclear devices, and plans to use them against the United States, Russia, France, and Germany. What he says may well be a hoax, or more specifically, deliberately planted disinformation to achieve particular political ends. I can think of several Great Powers who would find it useful to disseminate the fiction that ISIS is ready to use nuclear weapons.

However, it could also be true. If it is, you may be sure that the intelligence services of Russia and the major Western powers are well aware of it. As the ISIS defector points out, the West has moles inside the highest levels of the Caliphate.

And doesn't that really say it all? The establishment wants Amnesty for illegals. Donald Trump supports "touchback Amnesty" for all 20+ million illegal aliens in the U.S. today (as he and his son have stated here, here and here). Vote accordingly.

QOTD: "The greatest obstacle to defeating Islamic terrorism is still the left.

The left helped create Islamic terrorism; its immigration policies import terrorism while its civil rights arm obstructs efforts to prevent it and its anti-war rallies attack any effort to fight it. In America, in Europe and in Israel, and around the world, to get at Islamic terrorists, you have to go through the left.

When a Muslim terrorist comes to America, it’s the left that agitates to admit him. Before he kills, it’s the left that fights to protect him from the FBI. Afterward, leftists offer to be his lawyers. The left creates the crisis and then it fights against any effort to deal with it except through surrender and appeasement." --Daniei Greenfield

• Of the 243 classified emails, 128 were classified for containing “foreign government information,” which is considered “ born classified” and the “most important category of national security information” State Department officials encounter.

With a classification rate of nearly 27 percent, this was the most highly classified batch of emails yet, despite the fact the State Department only produced 10 percent of the emails it was required to under court order. And given the State Department’s claim that many of the emails they withheld were still being reviewed by other agencies as well as the steep increase in the number of emails classified as ‘SECRET,’ it appears Hillary Clinton’s email woes are only going to get worse. Indeed, many redactions in last night’s production had to do with information from several intelligence agencies including the CIA. No wonder Clinton’s friends in the State Department are trying to delay further releases until she’s cleared the early nominating contests.

Here are some of the most eye-popping emails from last night’s release below, which include classified conversations about embassy security in Egypt and a memo classified as ‘SECRET’ from John Kerry:

Under President Barack Obama, the United States has been fundamentally transformed. From the land of the free and the home of the brave, seven years into the Obama presidency, America acts like the land of the overregulated and the home of the risk averse.

In the Middle East, the new America is treacherous, and pathetic. It is despised by its allies and scorned by its enemies.

National Science Foundation officials award $7 billion in grants annually based on funding proposals the agency’s watchdog estimates have hundreds of examples of plagiarism and “falsified or fabricated data.”

Bonus QOTD: "[Trump] is another Huey Long. You are either for him or against him. No middle ground. And he will mercilessly attack his enemies, and those he perceives as enemies. Trump is tapping into the anger felt by the middle class, poor and working man – just as Huey Long did in the 1920′s and 1930′s. Washington Insiders, the elite and wealthy, and those who stood in Huey’s way eerily parallels what Trump is doing today. “Every Man A King” is a great fantasy, until totalitarian reality hits you like a brick (or a jackboot). Beware the populist." --'wdmann'

Led by such well known faith and cultural conservative leaders as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Bob VanderPlaats of the Family Leader, Pastor Joseph Brown, Vicki Crawford, Dr. James Dobson, Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt, Gary Bauer, Reverend CL Bryant, Brian Brown of The National Organization For Marriage, CHQ’s Richard A. Viguerie and Bishop E.W. Jackson, over 500 faith and cultural conservative leaders have endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for President in advance of the Iowa Caucuses.

In endorsing Ted Cruz for President Tony Perkins spoke for many faith leaders and cultural conservatives when he said, "I trust Ted to fight to pull America out of the political and cultural tailspin that President Obama’s policies have put us in. This is no normal election; this election is about the very survival of our Constitution and our republic.”

Perkins added a key consideration in the minds of many faith-first voters; Ted Cruz’s record of keeping his promises.

QOTD: "As Secretary of State, Ms. Clinton had access to a wide array of government-supplied communications systems, ranging from lightly encrypted to deeply so, at varying levels of classification, all intended to protect our nation’s secrets. She chose not to use them, and it’s not Hillary Clinton who’s paying the price for that.

All this angers Americans with experience in our military and intelligence services who understand what Ms. Clinton and her staff did—and that they would be held to far harsher standards for attempting anything similar. They know that brave Americans have given their lives protecting Top Secret Codeword information. They know that in every American embassy around the world, our diplomatic outposts that worked for Hillary Clinton, Marine guards have standing orders to fight to the death to protect the classified information that’s inside those embassies. That Hillary Clinton gave similar information away, by choice, is something she needs to explain if she expects to be our next Commander-in-Chief." --John R. Schindler

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) would be wise to avoid the mistake Ronald Reagan made early in his 1976 insurgent campaign to supplant President Gerald Ford as the Republican presidential nominee. Cruz needs a crystallizing justification — a signature issue.

Reagan only found one mid-way through his 1976 race, but he was able to use it to carry him to victory in 1980. Reagan’s populist call to hold on to the Panama Canal — “We built it! We paid for it! It’s ours! And we’re gonna keep it!” — resounded with voters in 1976. Cruz has an equally populist issue that could prove as successful: campaigning against the U.S. Supreme Court’s eminent-domain ruling.

There are tactics and characteristics of the American left that conservatives would be well advised to emulate. Until these lessons are learned, conservatives will likely continue to struggle at the ballot box, and liberty will be but a noble afterthought.

Perhaps the most critical lesson to learn is that politics, and governance in general, is incremental. The ebb and flow of the political environment and the mechanics of governance move incrementally, either toward liberty and constitutional principles, or toward centralized planning and governmental hegemony. Every piece of legislation, policy statement, regulation, executive order, election, and every judicial decision moves the nation, a state, or a community slightly one direction or the other. It rarely moves all the way to one extreme or the other.

Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, needs to issue $875 million in long-term bonds to help the district avoid bankruptcy – but on Jan. 27, the school district backed out of the planned sale. The district announced that it has postponed the bond sale and will assess the situation on a day-to-day basis.

The failure to issue the bonds means the district has to postpone the refinancing of several debts. According to CPS, $340 million of the total borrowings will be dedicated to refinancing old debt, and nearly $90 million will go toward paying off other short-term loans. The district plans to use nearly $400 million to pay for capital projects.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the same candidate. They’re both leftist radicals with degrees in political science who held back some of their more radical ideas to pursue political office. In the two years that they served together in the Senate, they voted the same way 93 percent of the time.

They’re also political opportunists. Bernie Sanders, no less than Hillary, reinvented his political views, including his allegiance to Socialism, numerous times over the years. Sanders moderated his positions on everything from gun control to Israel when it helped his political career. He’s now modifying plenty of positions all over again in order to appeal to new and different voters.

Bernie Sanders is no more authentic than Hillary Clinton and she is no less radical than he is.

QOTD: "I think any candidate for President owes it to the voters to go and stand in front of them, to answer the hard questions. I mean, it’s a matter of basic respect to the men and women of Iowa. . . . This is a job interview. And if you want a job interview, the first thing you should do to get the job is show up at the interview. And I think it’s really remarkable that Donald Trump thinks so little of the men and women of Iowa that he is willing to skip the debate altogether. He doesn’t think he should have any questions on his record. And it’s really quite astonishing that Donald is apparently so afraid of Megyn Kelly. Look, you know, journalists ask tough questions. You know, I promise you, anyone who’s going to be President of the United States — if you’re afraid of Megyn Kelly, then you’re going to be afraid of Hillary Clinton. And if you’re afraid of Vladimir Putin, if you’re afraid to have anyone ask questions, that does not bode well for what kind of Commander in Chief you make." --Sen. Ted Cruz

Friendlier relations between the Islamic Republic and the United States are possible, but “the key to that is in Washington’s hands, not Tehran’s,” Rouhani said at a press conference in Rome. The Iranian leader, who is currently traveling in Europe, also denied that his country supports terrorist groups, saying, “It is clear that Iran is a country opposed to terrorism and a country that fights terrorism.”

Reading through the article, one finds that it wasn't just customs that was bypassed, meaning that any contraband articles got through; it was also the immigration checks, meaning not only that excludable aliens got through, but that even legitimate nonimmigrant travelers are now free to roam around the United States without any official limits to their stay — in fact, without any official record that they ever entered.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton laughed when asked if she would release any of her speech transcripts that she delivered to Goldman Sachs in the past during a town hall Friday in Manchester, New Hampshire, The Intercept reported.

Clinton gleaned over $2 million in less than seven months from speeches to Wall Street banking houses immediately following her departure from the Obama administration, The New York Times reported. For example, GoldenTree Asset Management paid her $275,00 for remarks she made before their clients.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says Clinton is too close to Wall Street to fight the bankers as president. Sanders jabbed Clinton in Iowa over the issue saying, “You got to be really, really, really good to get $250,000 for a speech.”

QOTD: "The FBI investigation is centered around Clinton and members of her staff to determine if they deliberatively trafficked and shared information from highly classified sources onto an unsecure private email system.

"The bureau does not waive its primacy in espionage cases," the intelligence source said, referring to USC 18 793 and 794. "The security investigation is now part and parcel with the criminal [public corruption] investigation." The source said both tracks are being pursued "vigorously" and there is a sense of "incredulity as to what is being discovered."" --Catherine Herridge

At Monday’s Democrat Town Hall, an audience member asked Hillary Clinton how she would deal with the issue of the attack in Benghazi both in the campaign going forward and as president if she’s elected. Rather than actually answer the question, the Democratic presidential front-runner — you guessed it — danced around it.

“I am well aware that for partisan political purposes this continues, but let me tell you why this makes me — it makes me sad. It makes me sad because we’ve had, we’ve had terrorist attacks many times before in our country,” she said before waxing reminiscent. “When Ronald Reagan was president in 1983, our Marine barracks, our embassy were attacked in Beirut. More than 250 Americans were killed. The Democrats didn’t make that a partisan issue."

Pro-life women leaders from Iowa as well as the heads of national pro-life organizations are speaking out and urging Republican caucus-goers and voters to support anyone but Donald Trump. The following letter will be sent out to pro-life Iowans today.

Dear Iowans,

As pro-life women leaders from Iowa and across the nation, we urge Republican caucus-goers and voters to support anyone but Donald Trump. On the issue of defending unborn children and protecting women from the violence of abortion, Mr. Trump cannot be trusted and there is, thankfully, an abundance of alternative candidates with proven records of pro-life leadership whom pro-life voters can support. We have come to this conclusion after having listened patiently to numerous debates and news reports, but most importantly to Donald Trump’s own words.

The next president will be responsible for as many as four nominations to the Supreme Court.

QOTD: "The lawsuits [facing Disney and filed] by Mr. Perrero and Ms. Moore are based on the rules for H-1B visas, which Congress designed to bring foreign workers with special skills
into the country. Employers are required to declare to the Department of
Labor that hiring foreigners on the visas "will not adversely affect the
working conditions of U.S. workers similarly employed."

It has been called a show vote because the Ryan plan, even if the President signed it, would still allow the President to bring in an unlimited number of refugees from an unlimited number of countries.

Democrats’ filibuster on the motion to proceed to Ryan’s show vote comes one month after Speaker Ryan sent President Obama a blank check to fund visa issuances to nearly 300,000 (temporary and permanent) Muslim migrants in the next 12 months alone. Ryan’s decision to fully-fund Obama’s immigration agenda arguably ceded any leverage he may otherwise have had over Democrats and ensured the large-scale migration into America would continue and grow.

Away from the vociferous disputes that continue to rage around the Iranian nuclear deal, the Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate and General Staff have been engaged in detached analysis of the short and long-term effects, and they have come away with three central conclusions.

Details of their assessments, though shared with defense reporters over recent months, were publicly presented for the first last week by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot during a conference in Tel Aviv, organized by the Institute for National Security Studies.

By Julia HahnSen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’s interview with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd— in which he pledged to allow illegal aliens remain in the U.S.— has received widespread attention.

However, while Politico oxymoronically titled its article “Rubio: Law-Abiding Undocumented Immigrants Could Stay,” perhaps the most striking part of Rubio’s interview was his indication that criminal aliens would be allowed to remain in the United States as well.

QOTD: "Trump is spending his own money on local political operators in Iowa and New Hampshire so he can compete at the street level, but without the massive overhang of the consultancy and their party patrons...

...That’s certainly part of what is unnerving Conservative Inc about the Trump campaign. If this crude rich guy can buy his way into the game and then shove aside the commentariat on his way to the nomination, why will anyone bother catering to them in the future? ...

...The parties will still have a role as the legislative bodies are regulated to the benefit of political parties. As dangerous as Caesarism sounds, the American system allows for the legislature to claw back its authority in hurry if it cares to do it. Maybe the specter of billionaires buying the White House is what’s needed to slap the political parties to their senses and maybe is is what’s needed for the Congress to reassert its role in government." --The Z Man